


Prince (Not) Charming

by imaginary_golux



Series: Fractured Fairy Tales [17]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast Fusion, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 10:25:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11735115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: So apparently there's a very old version of the Beauty and the Beast story which explains some of the plot holes - like, for instance, why the Prince-as-Beast isn't a little nicer to the woman who could free him from his curse. I couldn't resist making it a Finn/Rey story.Beta by my Best of all possible Beloveds, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	Prince (Not) Charming

Once upon a time, a very long time ago and very far away, there was a king and a queen who loved each other dearly and were very happy save for one thing, and that was that they had no children. This was the only flaw in their otherwise very contented lives, and so at last the queen went to her best friends, who were both powerful fairies, and begged them to give her some means by which she could have a child. The fairies consulted with each other, and by and by they brought the queen a certain potion, and when she drank of it, in due time she conceived and bore a son, and she and the king named him Finn and rejoiced exceedingly, and named the fairies as his godmothers for their aid.

Now Prince Finn was not very old at all when a great misfortune befell him, for his father the king took a fall while out hunting, and broke his neck, and so the queen became a widow far before her time. At once all of the kings of the neighboring countries bethought them that a widowed queen would be very easy to defeat, and her country as good as theirs; and so they began raising great armies and rallying their troops, and sent declarations of warlike intent to the mourning queen. Yet the queen was in no wise cowed, and she put off her mourning colors and donned armor, declaring that if the neighboring kings desired war, she would show them that a woman could lead armies as well as any man; and she asked her dear friends the fairies to care for her son while she was gone, for she trusted no one more than they.

The fair folk of course agreed, and made a pact between themselves that one should watch the prince on all even-numbered days, and the other on odd-numbered days, and so they divided his time up evenly between them. No prince has ever had more attentive or devoted guardians, and he grew up in their care strong and bold and clever, kind and courteous and gentle, as noble in action as he was in birth, and all his servants and the common folk adored him.

So too of course did his royal mother, but alas, though she led the armies with both skill and courage, and beat back the neighboring kings time and again, they could not bear to admit they had been bested by a woman, and so time and again they raised new forces and came against her, so that the queen saw her son only very rarely indeed, and had to trust entirely in her dear friends to raise him, for always there was another war calling her away from her palace.

In this manner many years passed, until at last young Prince Finn was very nearly twenty-one, upon which auspicious date he would become king in his own right, and sit upon the throne his father had held, and be able to join his royal mother in leading the kingdom’s armies against their enemies; and indeed his mother the queen had great hopes that when Prince Finn took the field, their enemies would admit at last that they would by no means triumph, and would retreat and leave the country in peace at last.

On the very night before his twenty-first birthday, which happened to be an odd-numbered night, one of his fairy godmothers, whose name was Phasma, came to him in the midst of the preparations for his coronation on the morrow, and said to him, “Rejoice, godson! For I have decided to give thee an honor few mortals have ever received. On the morrow, when thou art crowned king, also thou shalt be married, for I have chosen thee as my groom.”

Prince Finn was far too polite to recoil in horror, as indeed he greatly desired to do, but instead said most courteously, “Gracious godmother, you must forgive me; but you have given me such good care and devotion that you are as a very mother to me, and I could not by any means act as a husband to you.”

Then the fairy Phasma became very wrathful, for she had intended to marry him as a means of gaining power in the mortal world, since in the world of the fair folk she had been losing power for many years, and she struck him with her staff and cursed him, saying, “Be thou as foul in appearance as all the terrible beasts together, and remain thou so until a woman shall agree to marry thee out of duty only and not for thine own sake.” Then she vanished at once, leaving poor Prince Finn transfigured all out of recognition, for he had the body of a bear and the head of a great wolf and the horns of an ox and the tusks of a great sea-going walrus, and looked indeed like something from a nightmare. When he turned and saw himself in the mirror, he cried out in horror, and at once his servants rushed in; but seeing the terrible monster where their beloved lord ought to stand, they fled in fear and anguish, rending their clothing and crying out that their prince was slain by the foulest beast imaginable. So poor Prince Finn was left alone in the great palace, weeping for his cruel fate.

The next morning, his other fairy godmother appeared, and found the whole palace empty save for the beast, whom she knew at once for her beloved godson; and at once she came to his side and comforted him, and asked him what misfortune had befallen him, and when he had told her the whole sorry tale, the fairy, whose name was Leia, said, “Well, that is very ill done of my kinswoman, and I shall have some words to say to her by and by, but in the meantime this must be remedied, for it is a most unjust curse.”

“Gracious godmother,” said Prince Finn, “where in all the world shall I find a woman who would wed me, when I look so foul and sound so terrible, and cannot even woo her?”

“As to that do not fret, but do all that I tell thee, and I shall promise thee a wife so well suited to thee as a hand is to a glove,” the fairy Leia assured him. “But ere I leave you to arrange all as it must be, I shall summon servants, for it is not right that you should be alone.” So saying, she summoned two of the minor fairy folk, one tall and golden and one short and mottled in appearance, and bade them care for all of Prince Finn’s needs, and then giving the prince certain instructions which he promised to follow most faithfully, she vanished at once from his sight.

Now just as Prince Finn’s godmother had said, it was not too many days before a certain merchant came, lost and bewildered, to the gardens about the palace where the prince remained in his desolate seclusion. The fairy servants saw to it that a table was laid for the lost traveler, and put upon it, along with all the good things to eat and drink, a single rose in a delicate vase. It was a very beautiful rose, and when the merchant had eaten and drunk he bethought himself of his youngest daughter, his adopted daughter, dutiful and kind, who had asked of him nothing but a single rose; and while he could not bring the beautiful jewels and dresses that his elder daughters desired, he thought to himself that he could at least bring the rose, and make one of his children happy at the last.

Yet as soon as he had taken the rose from the vase, the merchant reeled back in fear, for the most terrible Beast he had ever seen emerged at once from the shadows, bellowing in rage, and demanded of him, “How dare you steal my rose?”

Baffled and horrified, the merchant stammered out his tale, and the Beast, scowling through his fangs and tusks like a nightmare come to life, replied, “The price of my roses is a life; let your daughter come here to me, and pay for her rose. I will not slay her, nor do any harm to her, my word upon it; yet she must come, or it is you I will slay.” All this the prince had been most carefully commanded to say, and it had a most remarkably efficacious effect on the merchant, who promised at once to send his daughter in his place, and fled into the night, not noticing that his saddlebags had been filled by the fairy servants with gold and jewels and many fine things for himself and his daughters.

The merchant’s youngest daughter, whose name was Rey, was as dutiful as she was beautiful, and as beautiful as she was kind, and as kind as a midsummer’s day is long; and so when she heard her father’s tale, she set out straightaway for the palace of the Beast, and presented herself there without delay. Poor Prince Finn, watching as the fairy servants greeted her, was struck at once by her beauty and her kindness and courtesy, her clear love for her father and willingness to do her duty even if it should be painful; and the long and short of the matter is that he loved her at once, with all his whole heart, and could not bear to think but that somehow he would win her affection in return. But alas! Did he attempt to woo her, and win her heart in truth, she would never be able to lift the curse which bound him, and so poor Prince Finn did not dare to speak to her at all, lest his tongue, trained so long to courtly phrases, betray him by uttering the words of love and adoration he so wished to speak.

So it was that Prince Finn spoke not a word to his guest, nor came into her presence at all, until that night at dinner; and then he said only what his fairy godmother had commanded that he say, which was, “Rey, will you marry me?”

“Oh, no, Beast!” said poor Rey, very taken aback, and Prince Finn bowed very deeply and took himself away before he could fling himself at her feet and beg her to understand that he was not so foul and terrible as he now appeared, and speak the words of love which clamored at his tongue.

So it went for many days, and poor Prince Finn watched as his guest became very sad and withdrawn, though she seemed charmed by the fairy servants, and slowly began to lose her fear of him, for he never approached her but at dinner-time, and never spoke to her but to ask if she would marry him, for he dared not do more.

Then at last, after nearly a month, she said to him, “I see plainly that it is my duty to marry you, Beast, for that is the price of the rose which my father brought me; and so as it is my duty, I shall do so; name the date, and we will be wed.”

Then at once the curse was shattered into a million pieces, and Prince Finn stood again in his own accustomed seeming; and at once he flung himself down on his knees before Rey and cried, “Most gracious and blessed of women, I am Finn, the prince of this land. As you have agreed to marry me out of duty and no more, I do not hold you to your word, but I beg you, give me leave to court you and win your hand, for you have freed me from a most terrible curse, and I would gladly marry you, but would do nothing you despise; if you cannot bear the sight of me, only say so, and I will send you again to your family with great riches and praise your name forevermore.”

Rey was very much astonished by all of this, but her heart was touched by his fair words, and she replied, “If you wish to court me, I shall gladly remain.” Then Prince Finn rejoiced very gladly, and kissed her hands, and gave his tongue leave to speak all the words of adoration which he had been restraining for so long, so that he praised her courage and cleverness and kindness and dutiful nature all that night until the sun rose the next morning, and she laughed at him exceedingly and told him that such fine words were all well and good, but she would need to know him better before she could give him her heart.

So they spent many days together in perfect happiness, and as Prince Finn found his companion to be as clever and kind and brave and beautiful as a midsummer’s day is long, so did Rey find the prince to be as compassionate and noble and gentle and intelligent as the ocean is deep, and after not very much time at all, they were as firmly in love with each other as any two people have been in all the ages of the world.

Thus it came to pass that after another month, Prince Finn went again to his knees before his beloved, and begged her to marry him, and Rey put her hand in his and said, “Gladly will I marry you, with all my heart and all my will, not out of duty but out of love.” And so Prince Finn was happier than he had ever been before, and almost he blessed the evil fairy who had cursed him, for without the curse he might never have met Rey and won her heart and hand.

Yet all idylls must come to an end, and the following day the queen Finn’s mother came at last from the battle lines, having been told of the curse and its breaking by her dear friend the fairy Leia, and found her son and his betrothed very happy beneath a willow, speaking in lovers’ tones.

“My son,” she said to Prince Finn, “I rejoice that you are freed from the terrible curse, and may take up at last your father’s throne and crown! But whatever promises you have made to this young lady, they must be set aside, for a prince must marry a princess.”

“My lady mother and my queen,” said the prince, “I will in no wise do so, for while a prince must marry a princess, as I am come of age, so I am to be a king, and a king may wed as he wills, and I shall wed no woman but Rey, for she is the queen of my heart.”

Then they argued very fiercely, for the queen had her heart set on her son marrying a woman of appropriate rank, who would bring a fine alliance to their country, and Prince Finn would hear no word of marriage to any but she who had rescued him and won his heart, and neither would admit defeat, for Prince Finn had all his mother’s stubborn warrior spirit and the queen had still the iron will which had kept her upon the throne for twenty years.

Then at last the fairy Leia came upon them as they argued, and spoke to the queen, saying, “Be at ease, my dear friend, for this young woman is half of fairy blood, that of my own dear brother, and surely fairy blood is as good as royal.” And this was very astonishing both to Rey and to her beloved, but the queen would hear none of it, and demanded that Prince Finn wed a princess or no one.

Then at last the fairy Leia became quite wroth, and said, “Well, as I see it is so very important to thee, I shall tell thee that young Rey’s mortal mother was a queen in a far land, and so she is royal and fairy both; will that content thee?”

And with that the queen was contented, and ceased to argue against the marriage. So it came to pass that not even a month later, the young King Finn was crowned, and upon the very same day he married the Princess Rey, his own true love, who had saved him from a terrible curse.

Together King Finn and his Queen Rey defeated the armies of the neighboring kings, and forged strong treaties of peace with all the nearby kingdoms, and became known across all the land for their wisdom and compassion and the great love between them, which shone ever in their eyes; and they lived and reigned in perfect happiness for a very long time, and if they have not died, they are ruling there still.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm imaginarygolux on tumblr - drop on by!


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